Ballroom Blitz #016

Video

youtu.be/Jqeb3FGtRBY

Transcript

Ian: Hey guys and girls of the interwebs I'm Ian

Lindsey: and I'm Lindsey

Ian & Lindsey: and this is the Ballroom Blitz

Ian: Can you remember when I said this... "heel turns are not today" well now it's time for heel turns.

It is time to tackle the heel turn the other thing from the feather that makes foxtrot a foxtrot, but of course there is a lot more to heel turns than we can cover in a single Blitz and heel turns crop up in more than just foxtrot so we're going to do what we can keep it short, but stay tuned there will be more heel turn orientated blitzes coming up soon.

You can consider your heel turn to be the fanciest Chasse you will ever dance. And if we start there and build up that is the best place to start because you are going to make a step, bring your feet together and then step out after that following that step together step type of arrangement just like a Chasse.

Of course a heel turn turns on the heel it doesn't turn on the ball of the foot this is incredibly important because if you step into a heel turn and turn on the ball of the foot you will get a very undesirable effect. Now, to turn appropriately on the heel of the foot you must be moving backwards. So, if you are traveling forwards into what is a heel turn you're not actually performing the heel turn portion, this means that the followers are most likely to perform a heel turn and leaders heel turns have a slightly different arrangement and a slightly different technique because they are leading the step as well as performing the heel turn; so, we'll leave them for another time. So everything you see in this video only applies to followers.

Of course Heel Turns can occur on either foot you have two of them you can travel forwards and backwards on either of them so you're either going to go left-together-left or right-together-right following your regular ballroom turning; if you're going back on the left you're turning to the right and if you're going back on the right you're turning to the left but the arrangement is the same. You step back or are more appropriately driven back onto that foot by the leader coming forward.

When the weight achieves the heel step when it comes over the heel and the heel has landed on the foot we close the feet just like a chasse, lift the ball of the moving foot to turn, change weight, and then step out on the original foot that moved. Hence, left-together-left or right-together-right.

[Demonstration with explanation]

Ian: So, you get heel turns to the left and heel turns to the right and even though they are most native to the Slow Foxtrot, they do occur in Quickstep and in the Modern Waltz. They never occur in the Tango and they certainly never occur in the Viennese Waltz.

Now depending on exactly what dance you are dancing the exact timing of your Heel Turn will change. The classic foxtrot timing is slow-slow-and or slow-quick-quick if you're that way inclined. However, if your dancing heel turns in Quickstep they'll often just be straight slows because the quicks would be too quick, and of course if you're putting these into a Modern Waltz like with a double reverse spin they will often have a chasse type timing of one-two-and-three or an and step somewhere along the line to get in that extra step of the heel turn.

And that is it blitzing out the heel turns. As you can probably imagine there is loads more to talk about with heel turns we have only just scratched the surface but these are the basis steps that you can put into nearly any Heel Turn the rest is a little bit more situational so we will talk about: frame, exact leads, [and] timings, things like that as we do individual figures but this will get you started in a very broad spectrum type of way. So smash it into your foxtrot and your other heel turn steps and we will see you in the next one.